Category: Latin

The question as to the educational worth of any study must always be a pertinent one. If Latin is not of fundamental importance in the high-school curriculum, then large numbers of students are making a prodigious error in pursuing the subject, and the sooner we understand this, the better for our civilization. If, on the …

Parents often ask classical educators, “What good is Latin going to do for my child? Is spending all those years on a dead language really going to educate my child?” We trip over ourselves in pointing out the many benefits of learning Latin. It trains students to think logically, to better understand grammatical concepts, and …

It might be easy as a grammar school teacher to assume that the repetition of “amo, amas, amat …” is not as important as teaching Caesar or Virgil, but such self-deprecation would be wrong. Imagine a construction worker thinking that his role in laying the foundation is insignificant simply because no one will really see …

Many who are attracted to the idea of a classical education don’t know exactly why, nor do they understand the necessity for Latin, or at least so much of it. A little bit of Latin is a good thing, they say, but every year? Spinach is a good thing, but every day? In classical education, …

Some critics have said that the value of Roman literature is that it has been the vehicle which conveyed Greek ideas to the world. The Romans took their art and, as far as their civilization rests on these, their civilization from Greece. Why, then, do we study Latin? Some of the reasons are given by …

There are a lot of good reasons for thinking that Latin should be restored to its former place of honor as the basic subject in the elementary years. In previous issues of The Classical Teacher, I talked about some of these. But knowing that you should teach it and knowing how to teach it are …

Because of the education meltdown in the twentieth century, the art of teaching Latin—and nearly everything else—has essentially been lost. As we work to restore the content of the classical curriculum, we must also strive to resurrect the art of teaching it. Latin, as it was taught in the second half of the twentieth century, was a two-year ordeal—grammar in the …

    In today’s materialistic society, the thing we all seem to want more of is immaterial: time. Homeschool parents struggle to teach multiple children in different grades. Classroom teachers have up to 25 or 30 students in a single grade (15 as a maximum if they are lucky), and their time in the classroom is diminished with music classes, art …

If you are a classical educator—either a teacher in a school or a homeschooler—there is one question you will be asked again and again: Why teach Latin? This is probably because there seems on the surface to be no practical reason for doing it. Why would we consider studying Latin with so many other priorities …

In his 1911 book The Teaching of Latin and Greek, Charles Bennett listed the central principles of Latin instruction. Although this book has long been out of print, it contains what I believe to be the most helpful explanation of how Latin should be taught. It is these principles which underlie Memoria Press’ Forms series. …